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That's just mostly debt, a hundred years ago it would have been a promise to pay you ~1/20 oz of gold. At the moment I think a $100 bill costs about 20 cents to
by louloulou 4y ago
That's just mostly debt, a hundred years ago it would have been a promise to pay you ~1/20 oz of gold. At the moment I think a $100 bill costs about 20 cents to produce, so it's 99.8% debt on the Fed's balance sheet.
- mellavora 4y agoNo, fully debt, by your own words. > a hundred years ago it would have been a promise to pay you ~1/20 oz of gold. so 100 years ago, it represented a debt of 1/20 oz of gold.
- swores 4y agoTheir point is that even if the debt went away you can technically prescribe a very small amount of value to the actual object that has been produced to represent that debt (what we call the "paper" note). Although that intrinsic value would arguably be lower than the cost to produce it in the case of the debt actually ceasing to be valid, but for that to happen society would have bigger problems than worrying about the material value of old bank notes.